Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Top 10 of 2010 #5-1

5. Grasslung - Sincere Void (Root Strata)

On his first real CD release, Jonas Asher aka Grasslung has created a real stunner, a fantastic drone album that strikes a perfect balance between a pure soundscape and something more organic and tangible. "Roland Park Noose" washes over the listener in graceful waves of noise with a gritty static pulsating throughout, almost rhythmic. "Tired of Remembering" is beautiful and nostalgic, two plaintive piano chords beneath creaking static, like a record player left on as the side plays out in an abandoned house. "Scarred Hands We Drift" is the breathtaking opener, a lush dronescape of delayed notes that creates an almost choral effect over a pulsing sea of warm sound and a high end reverberation like a siren lost in the mist. Each track is its own mini-masterpiece; taken as a whole they form a spectacular, cohesive package.

Yellow Swans are no more. One of the most exciting duos in noise music has left the scene but Going Places, their final offering, is perhaps their best yet, a searing kosmiche masterpiece, propulsive, haunting, unhinged yet far more constrained and considered than much of their ultra-abrasive earlier work. There's still a hell of a lot of squalling static and glowering, brutal noise to be sure though. Going Places is immensely cacophonous and the louder you listen to it (through the best stereo headphone you can find) the more powerful it becomes. This is the kind of noise album that truly envelopes you, that overwhelms and buries and pummels. But somehow Yellow Swans have made Going Places something wondrous and beautiful as well. Going Places is an apt title: it sounds like the soundtrack to some great cosmic journey and is the perfect end to a long and admirable career.

In early 2010, ambient maestro Matthew Cooper aka Eluvium released his latest album, Similes. For the first time, Cooper sang on several tracks and added in percussive elements, making his first real "songs." Cooper's voice was dry and laconic, drawing not completely unwarranted aesthetic comparisons to Ian Curtis. But the best parts of that album were the soundscapes over which Cooper sang and while the addition of vocals was interesting and Similes still ended up being a pretty great album it ultimately didn't completely succeed. Enter Static Nocturne several months later, a single 50-minute long track self released by Cooper in an edition of 200 copies on CD in handmade and hand numbered cases. The album long track is stunning, some of the best work Cooper has ever done under any moniker. Cooper created Static Nocturne as an homage to white noise and static - the kind from the world of music as well as the natural world - and it shows. Static Nocturne is transporting, a wonderful, undulating, glowingly calm ocean of sound. Deep, glorious dronescapes shift and roll as the piece moves through its stages. Organs and pianos appear from grainy static fragments, field recordings blear almost to the point and often beyond of recognition, white noise washes - at time thunderously at others with the utmost serenity - over the listener. There's never a dull moment and in the rare moments when Static Nocturne hovers on that line it adds something new or veers off - albeit with sublime composure - in a different direction to recapture the attention of the listener. A truly wonderful album to fall asleep to - and I mean that in the best possible way - Static Nocturne also rewards careful, concentrated listening. So much is going on beneath the crackling, thrumming surface. Cooper has outdone himself here, making one of the finest pieces of ambient music this year.

For the first time with his monumental Love is a Stream, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma makes a full foray into the world of blissed-out shoegaze - something he only hinted at at times before - leaving the haunting, glacial drone of his earlier work aside almost entirely. This is gorgeous, elating music, a torrent of immense, blissful noise, textures blown out with dreamy haze, shimmering walls of sound with buried harmonies humming beneath. It's often summery and hopeful but also incredibly loud and dense, chaotic and harsh, in some ways akin to both My Bloody Valentine and Tim Hecker's "Harmony in Ultraviolet" (fans of both will be very happy with what they hear in any case) but more abstracted, a stunning sort of synthesis of the two which manages to make these references while maintaining a distinctly original sound. There's still a hell of a lot of grit and mountains of harsh white noise static, and droning guitars and synthesizers and washed out, buried vocals all of which come together to make this something all its own. Somehow Cantu-Ledesma managed to do all this and still fill the album with what can almost be described as pop hooks albeit ones nearly lost altogether in the noise. There's melodies here for sure even if it does take a whole lot of digging beneath the gauze of glowing sound to find them. Hugely listenable yet layered and complex, this is a unique, amazing piece of music and the best yet from one of the most exciting artists around.

Processions is the debut release of Icelandic composer Daniel Bjarnason and it is without a doubt one of the finest entries in the modern classical genre in some time. Although not dissimilar to his contemporaries - names like Max Richter, Olafur Arnalds, and Johann Johannsson come to mind - Bjarnason eschews the glitchy electronics and computerized flourishes of the latter two and pursues grander, more ambitious compositions than all three. Processions is a wonder, a consistently startling pleasure. Comprised of two three-movement pieces and a stand alone piece, Processions careens and gallops, tugs at the heart and causes it to race, utilizing a full orchestra to beautiful, jarring, and often surprising effect. The first piece opens with a thrilling crescendo of buzzsawing violins, kerthunking pizzicato and crumpling percussion before settling into a quiet serenity. The third movement is a mournful affair, a lone violin weaving a melancholy path over other murmuring strings before flickering into silence. The second piece is far more epic than the first, with spiraling, ferocious piano, a full brass section which blasts and glowers mightily, booming percussion, and monumental crescendos and builds. Still, Bjarnason never lets his compositions become too grandiose or cinematic. There's a remarkable sense of restraint even while Bjarnason takes us to the very edge of the precipice. Processions closes quietly, with a stand along piece for harp ushering us out, allowing us to contemplate the sublime sonic journey we just took. An absolutely essential album and one I happily call Best of 2010.

No comments:

Post a Comment

This blog is intended to help people hear great music. While most of the posts here will include download links, these are meant to be purely introductory. If you download anything from this blog and like it please seriously considering buying a physical copy or, if that's not possible as much of what will be posted here is out of print, buy something else by the artist. I will always provide links to labels and the like to facilitate this. If you are an artist or run a label and see your work/a release you've put out here and would not like it shared, just leave a comment or send an email and the link will be removed immediately. Thanks and enjoy the music.